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The Intellectual-Principle, the veritably and essentially
intellective, can this be conceived as ever falling into error,
ever failing to think reality?
Assuredly no: it would no longer be intelligent and therefore no
longer Intellectual-Principle: it must know unceasingly- and
never forget; and its knowledge can be no guesswork, no
hesitating assent, no acceptance of an alien report. Nor can it
call on demonstration or, we are told it may at times act by this
or, I method, at least there must be something patent to it in
virtue of its own nature. In actual fact reason tells us that all
its knowledge is thus inherent to it, for there is no means by
which to distinguish between the spontaneous knowledge and the
other. But, in any case, some knowledge, it is conceded, is
inherent to it. Whence are we to understand the certainty of this
knowledge to come to it or how do its objects carry the
conviction of their reality?
Consider sense-knowledge: its objects seem most patently
certified, yet the doubt returns whether the apparent reality may
not lie in the states of the percipient rather than in the
material before him; the decision demands intelligence or
reasoning. Besides, even granting that what the senses grasp is
really contained in the objects, none the less what is thus known
by the senses is an image: sense can never grasp the thing
itself; this remains for ever outside.
Now, if the Intellectual-Principle in its act- that is in knowing
the intellectual- is to know these its objects as alien, we have
to explain how it makes contact with them: obviously it might
never come upon them, and so might never know them; or it might
know them only upon the meeting: its knowing, at that, would not
be an enduring condition. If we are told that the
Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Objects are linked in
a standing unity, we demand the description of this unity.
Next, the intellections would be impressions, that is to say not
native act but violence from without: now how is such impressing
possible and what shape could the impressions bear?
Intellection, again, becomes at this a mere handling of the
external, exactly like sense-perception. What then distinguishes
it unless that it deals with objects of less extension? And what
certitude can it have that its knowledge is true? Or what enables
it to pronounce that the object is good, beautiful, or just, when
each of these ideas is to stand apart from itself? The very
principles of judgement, by which it must be guided, would be [as
Ideas] excluded: with objects and canons alike outside it, so is
truth.
Again; either the objects of the Intellectual-Principle are
senseless and devoid of life and intellect or they are in
possession of Intellect.
Now, if they are in possession of Intellect, that realm is a
union of both and is Truth. This combined Intellectual realm will
be the Primal Intellect: we have only then to examine how this
reality, conjoint of Intellectual-Principle and its object, is to
be understood, whether as combining self-united identity with yet
duality and difference, or what other relation holds between
them.
If on the contrary the objects of Intellectual-Principle are
without intelligence and life, what are they? They cannot be
premises, axioms or predicates: as predicates they would not have
real existence; they would be affirmations linking separate
entities, as when we affirm that justice is good though justice
and good are distinct realities.
If we are told that they are self-standing entities- the distinct
beings Justice and Good- then [supposing them to be outside] the
Intellectual Realm will not be a unity nor be included in any
unity: all is sundered individuality. Where, then, are they and
what spatial distinction keeps them apart? How does the
Intellectual-Principle come to meet with them as it travels
round; what keeps each true to its character; what gives them
enduring identity; what conceivable shape or character can they
have? They are being presented to us as some collection of
figures, in gold or some other material substance, the work of
some unknown sculptor or graver: but at once the
Intellectual-Principle which contemplates them becomes
sense-perception; and there still remains the question how one of
them comes to be Justice and another something else.
But the great argument is that if we are to allow that these
objects of Intellection are in the strict sense outside the
Intellectual-Principle, which, therefore, must see them as
external, then inevitably it cannot possess the truth of them.
In all it looks upon, it sees falsely; for those objects must be
the authentic things; yet it looks upon them without containing
them and in such knowledge holds only their images; that is to
say, not containing the authentic, adopting phantasms of the
true, it holds the false; it never possesses reality. If it knows
that it possesses the false, it must confess itself excluded from
the truth; if it fails of this knowledge also, imagining itself
to possess the truth which has eluded it, then the doubled
falsity puts it the deeper into error.
It is thus, I suppose, that in sense-perception we have belief
instead of truth; belief is our lief; we satisfy ourselves with
something very different from the original which is the occasion
of perception.
In fine, there would be on the hypothesis no truth in the
Intellectual-Principle. But such an Intellectual-Principle would
not be truth, nor truly an Intellectual-Principle. There would be
no Intellectual-Principle at all [no Divine Mind]: yet elsewhere
truth cannot be.
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